Concern high in Tokyo over radiation in tap water

TOKYO - Radiation leaking from Japan's tsunami-damaged nuclear-power plant has caused Tokyo's tap water to exceed safety standards for infants to drink, officials said Wednesday, sending anxiety levels soaring over the nation's food and water supply.

Residents cleared store shelves of bottled water after Tokyo Gov. Shintaro Ishihara said levels of radioactive iodine in tap water were more than twice what is considered safe for babies. Workers today loaded trucks with boxes of bottled water to restock store shelves across the city.

Officials begged those in the city to buy only what they needed, saying hoarding could hurt the thousands of people without any water in areas devastated by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami.

"I've never seen anything like this," clerk Toru Kikutaka said, surveying the downtown Tokyo supermarket where the entire stock of bottled water sold out almost immediately after the news broke, despite a limit of two, two-liter bottles per customer.

The unsettling new development affecting Japan's largest city, home to around 13 million people, added to growing fears over the nation's food supply as nuclear workers at the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant 140 miles to the north struggled to regain control of the facility.

The nuclear-power plant has been leaking radiation since the tsunami engulfed its cooling systems, leading to explosions and fires in four of its six reactors. After setbacks and worrying black smoke forced an evacuation, workers were back to work today, said Hidehiko Nishiyama of the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency.

Nearly two weeks after the magnitude-9 quake, about 660,000 household still do not have water in Japan's northeast, the government said. Electricity has not been restored to about 209,000 homes, Tohoku Electric Power Co. said.

The crisis is emerging as the world's most expensive natural disaster on record, likely to cost up to $309 billion, according to a new government estimate. Police say an estimated 18,000 people were killed.

Concerns about food safety spread Wednesday to Tokyo after officials said tap water showed elevated radiation levels: 210 becquerels of iodine-131 per liter of water - more than twice the recommended limit of 100 becquerels per liter for infants. Another measurement taken later at a different site showed the level was 190 becquerels per liter. The recommended limit for adults is 300 becquerels.

Infants are particularly vulnerable to radioactive iodine, which can cause thyroid cancer, experts say. The limits refer to sustained consumption rates, and officials urged calm, saying that parents should stop giving the tap water to babies, but that it was no problem if the infants already had consumed small amounts.

They said the levels posed no immediate health risk for older children or adults.

Dr. Harold Swartz, a professor of radiology and medicine at Dartmouth Medical School in the United States, said the radiation amounts being reported in the water are too low to pose any real risk, even to infants who are being fed water-based formula or to breast-fed infants whose mothers drink tap water.

Radioactive iodine is also short-lived, with a half-life of eight days - the length of time it takes for half of it to break down harmlessly.

Radiation from the nuclear plant has seeped into raw milk, seawater and 11 kinds of vegetables, including broccoli, cauliflower and turnips, from areas around the plant. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said it was halting imports of Japanese dairy and produce from the region near the facility. Hong Kong went further and required that Japan perform safety checks on meat, eggs and seafood before accepting those products.